James May

Trouble in store

Every now and then, one of the classic car magazines runs a
type of story that has always baffled me. It begins with the revelation that
something like a rare Lambo has been found abandoned in a garage.

Reading on, we discover that it’s been there since 1980.
It’s very dusty and the tyres are flat but, remarkably, it’s complete and in
need of only ‘gentle recommissioning’, as the classics lot put it.

A few months later we see a picture of the same car bowling
down a tree-lined road in the hands of a bloke who never imagined he could get
his aforementioned hands on such a thing. Marvellous.

Now here’s what I’ve never understood. How did anyone ever
forget about owning a Lamborghini? Or grow bored of owning one? How did a car
that is obviously in sound condition end up sitting idle for 25 years? If the
previous owner didn’t like it, why wasn’t it sold? Or even given away? All it
took was a postcard in the local newsagent’s window.

I can see how a fountain pen might work its way to the back
of a desk drawer and be overlooked for two decades. A few years ago I bought my
girlfriend a pair of boots that she didn’t really like, and they are in the
corner of her wardrobe, still in the original box and awaiting the great day
when they appear on eBay as an item of mint and unused retro chic. But a car? I
really don’t foresee a day when I can’t be bothered with my Boxster any more
and I just leave it in its garage gathering mould and mouse droppings. Apart
from anything else, I’d want the storage space.

But now I understand exactly how it happens. For the past
month I’ve been driving around France making a new programme for the BBC, and
for this purpose I bought a 1989 Jaguar XJ-S convertible. It was a good one.
Everything on it worked, there was no rot, the hood was free of tears, the
mileage was confirmed at under 60,000, and I loved it. Before I left I had it
thoroughly serviced and checked, and a few marginal components such as radiator
hoses and brake pads were replaced. It still had its original toolkit and spare
wheel, and even the unused bag thing that the conscientious owner is supposed
to use to cover the hood when it’s folded. And I’ve always wanted an XJ-S
convertible.

After a few days of driving around France, it sprang a small
oil leak. Tiny, really, and from the little micro switch that governs the oil
pressure gauge on the instrument panel. Sadly, this little component was not
available in any of the local garages I tried, so I resigned myself to topping
up the oil instead. It was only losing a spoonful of 20/50 each day, and as it
was all dripping on France I wasn’t actually that bothered. I’d sort it out
when I got home.

“Here’s what I’ve never understood. How did anyone ever
forget about owning a Lamborghini? Or grow bored of owning one?”

And this is exactly where all those Lamborghini-in-a-barn
stories really begin. The Jaguar had crossed that invisible line between being
a car and being a car that ‘needs some work’. It was the first scuff on a new
pair of shoes, the first chip in the paint of a newly-decorated room, that
moment when the case for your sunglasses disappears.

So when the air-conditioning packed up owing to some
otherwise minor electrical fault, I decided to live with it for the moment. The
car needed work anyway, so that was just something else to add to the list. As
was the passenger door mirror, which somehow became detached from its electric
motor, so that the motor whirred away but the mirror didn’t move. I could sort
that out in half an hour when I was in my own garage with my own toolbox.

I think you can see where this is going. There were now
three faults with the Jag, and fixing them all was probably a day’s work. That
became two days when a Frenchman drove into the back of me and bent the bumper.
And then it needed another day, because another Frenchman (or it may have been
a German, since we were in Alsace and no one is entirely sure who owns it at
the moment) scraped a rear wheelarch in a car park.

This is why the so-called ‘rolling restoration’ of an old
car never works; the notion that the car can be driven while you complete all those
little jobs concerning trim, paint, interior lights, dicky alternators and so
on. It’s not possible, because in driving the car you will create problems
quicker than they can be cured. A rolling restoration is really just a headlong
and brakeless descent to the scrapyard.

And as the weeks passed, more things fell apart. The trip
computer died, the back section of the driver’s seat fell off, one of the
windows became loose, the exhaust started blowing when I clouted it on a
boulder, the radio aerial jammed in the down position.

Here’s where it ends. For complex reasons to do with
insurance for filming, the Jag was actually bought by the production company
making the programme, the idea being that I would buy it from them when we’d
finished. I’ve now put it in their car park and run away, so it could stay
there for 20 years. And then a Classic Cars journalist as yet unborn will find
it and wonder how it came to be forgotten.

I still want an XJ-S, but I don’t want that one. It’s
broken. If I’d mended the oil leak I might have stayed on top of it, but I
didn’t and now it’s ruined. It’s been filed under ‘too difficult’ like the
letter from the video-hire shop reminding me that I still have their copy of
Where Eagles Dare and owe them £120. That’s been at the bottom of my in-tray
for at least six years.

If there’s anything wrong with your car – anything – stop
what you’re doing and go and sort it out. Now. Same goes for your house.
There’s probably a loose doorknob or a damp patch that needs fixing. Do it.

Do it, before the next problem comes along, or it
will all become too much. It may seem like nothing more than an irritating
small job to you, but somewhere, a man with a bulldozer is limbering up for the
demolition job.